Time change messing with my biological clock

Since my daughter was born, my wife and I have found the extra few minutes – or on some weekends, hours -- of sleep. Since then, I have long been aware that opportunities for good, restful sleep are few and far between and I have since conditioned myself to get to sleep on time and get enough rest to be civil to my family in the first hours of the morning.

What I was not prepared for was the effect that daylight and darkness have on my sleep patterns.

Normally, I wake up every morning between 6:45 and 6:55 a.m., having gone to sleep no later than 11 p.m. the night before.

In the last week of Daylight Savings Time, the mornings were darker and even though my body is used to getting out of bed at a certain time, 7:30 a.m. would come around, and I'd struggle to get myself up and out of bed, even with a half-hour of extra sleep.

My daughter?

Even worse.

She normally gets up about ten minutes after I do. Normally.

That whole first week of November, she slept in. And when she woke up, she let her Daddy have it.

My wife takes the train to work, so it becomes my duty to drop two-and-a-half-year-old Gabrielle off at her aunt's house and then go to work, all usually by about 7:45 a.m.

The first week of November, though, messed with all our schedules.

We would all sleep late, and then my wife would dash off to the train station to catch her train.

Gabrielle would sleep until 7:45 or 8, and then be grumpy and uncooperative as Daddy tried valiantly to get her dressed, refusing to help even the slightest bit, and eventually lying limp on her bed as a means of non-violent protest.

'Nice try, sweetheart,' I think to myself as she passively refuses to move even one muscle, 'but that's not what Gandhi had in mind.'

By now, it's 8:15, and I can mentally see the cars bottlenecking on the expressway as I stand there, like a total chump, holding a warm sweater's arms open for a little girl that has decided no matter what, she was not going to make getting out of the house easy and will not under any circumstances, put her arms out to go into the sweater.

Oh, man. It's 8:30.

'Gabrielle,' I plead, 'please put on your sweater so we can go, please? Daddy's very late for work.'

She folds her arms, just out her lower lip in a pout and says, as though, this should be a reason to stay home and let her watch cartoons, 'I grumpy.'

I look over at the clock. 8:39 a.m.

I look at her for an instant, and throw her over my shoulder, cover her in the sweater, and take her out to the car.

'Daddy's grumpy, too, sweetheart.'